Daily Archives: August 24, 2012

A recent development in Arkansas must be giving the feds conniptions. I mean, this sort of thing isn’t supposed to be occurring in the South, for God’s sake! So, just what is this thing that isn’t supposed to happen? Why, it’s a movement to legalize medical marijuana in the Razorback State. Of all the nerve!

Ryan Denham, the leader of the group Arkansans for Compassionate Care, and the one heading up the effort to put medical marijuana on the November ballot, is correct when he says his state’s residents are no different than those who reside in the other 17 states and D.C., which all have some form of legalized medical marijuana policy. People have common needs, afflictions, hopes, and wants, and it matters not where they reside in the United States–or in the world for that matter.

One of Denham’s detractors, Jerry Cox, the head of the conservative Arkansas Family Council, asks a truly ignorant question in reference to this measure.

“Why would we want to pass a law that blatantly violates federal law?”

Well, Mr. Cox, so you’re saying that you are OK with all of the federal laws, rules, and regulations as they currently exist? Think about it. You’re “conservative,” right? Do you like Roe v. Wade? Do you like Obamacare? This list could go on and on.

“The most fascinating and practical of all these energy technologies are LFTR reactors. LFTR reactors use the plentiful and cheap Thorium element in an inherently safe type of nuclear reactor that was developed in the late 1960s. It is a safe and proven technology that countries like China and India are racing to commercialize,” Coalition of Freedom president Jim Flaugher said.

But he says development of Thorium energy technology faces a huge hurdle. Federal regulations make Thorium based energy solutions difficult to develop.

“Energy policy and initiatives that originate from the federal government, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have had a near disastrous effect on our country’s energy future. The seemingly endless unconstitutional federal mandates have severely restricted our country’s ability to produce and provide our own energy needs.”

Share this:

Speaking outside a helicopter museum in eastern Pennsylvania this week, Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan bemoaned the “irresponsible defense cuts” and subsequent job losses that would occur under the Budget Control Act’s sequestration spending cuts. That would be the same Budget Control Act that Paul Ryan voted for, and, at least initially, defended.

“What conservatives like me have been fighting for, for years, are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money,” Ryan told FOX News’s Sean Hannity shortly after the agreement was reached last August. “And if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can’t turn that off without a super-majority vote. We got that in law.”

It’s not just Ryan’s backing away from the BCA’s spending cuts that’s irritating; it’s the fact that he’s basing his opposition to the cuts on the same flawed Keynesian rationale that the president used to justify his failed stimulus package. As Chris Edwards has noted, shifting resources from the government sector to the private sector is good for the economy: